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Hive Tenebra adventure outline

Contributed by Lucifer216
Friday, 08 February 2008

A petty criminal of Ambulon is sentenced to the punishment of dangling

and miraculously survives his sentence. As a consequence of starvation
and deprivation, the man, one Reth Salsman, has become convinced that
the Emperor has commanded him to attract an army of disciples and
return the abandoned Hive Tenebra back to its former glory.

The acolyte’s inquisitor has charged them with the task of investigating whether Reth’s visions are the
work of the Emperor or something more malign. Equally important is the need to ensure that if there is anything malefic
malingering in the Hive, that it is either kept quiescent or terminated with extreme prejudice.

However, what actually awaits them is an enlightened community of mutants, many of them psychic. Thanks to a strange
lingering radiation permeating the Hive from the meltdown of power reactors of esoteric nature, the incidence of mutation
is high, but at the same time, all psykers within the hive are immune to the predations of the warp, while still able to fully
utilise their powers. This quirk has been mistakenly attributed by the mutants to a series of mental exercises pioneered
by the colony founders, who after the hive population had vanished or been evacuated (the story varies immensely,
depending on who is speaking).

To ensure that the party are subject to a number of moral dilemmas, it helps if it includes at least one sanctioned psyker.

The situation offers the following decisions for the party:

- Do they try to protect the mutant community from “Preacher” Salsman’s army of misfits

- If they succeed, do they

- Do they try and get to the bottom of what is giving the psykers their supposed invulnerability against warp predators.
The result of a successful investigation would be the discovery of rare shards which increase the incidence of physical
mutation, while making their bearer extremely resistant to mental corruption and possession.

- Trying to take any psykers back for questioning or to present to the inquisitor is a really bad idea. Completely untrained
and unprepared for the true horror of the warp, minor daemons rip their souls apart and possess their bodies once they
are a good distance from the hive.

- If the party presides over the slaughter of the mutant community, then there is still plenty to play for. Perhaps the
mutants were actually doing their best to keep a daemon trapped in a psycho-reactive stone or other object and without
their rituals and devotions, the wards will quickly buckle under the daemon’s wrath. Realising that his actions may
have doomed the planet, the Preacher’s faith buckles. The party must either rekindle it and convince him that the
Emperor must have surely guided his hand, making him the instrument of the fiend’s final demise or re-inact the
rituals themselves. This is surprisingly difficult given that much of the ritual requires the playing of music instruments
designed for musicians with more than the traditional number of digits per hand.

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This story can be easily adapted towards whatever theme the GM desires. 4) in particular offers a bleak lesson in why
the laws of the Imperium are the way they are.

Perhaps the best result for the party is one in which the mutant enclave is spared and their considerable occult expertise
is added to their inquisitor’s considerable list of resources. Of course, the Inquisitor could of course splutter with
rage and order the party to return and purge the twisted freaks properly, depending on his/her personality.

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